REIGN OF HENRY II.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1154.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1158.]
The death of Stephen left an undisputed succession for the first time
since the death of Edward the Confessor. Henry, descended equally from
the Norman Conqueror and the old English kings, adopted by Stephen,
acknowledged by the barons, united in himself every kind of title. It
was grown into a custom for the king to grant a charter of liberties on
his accession to the crown. Henry also granted a charter of that kind,
confirming that of his grandfather; but as his situation was very
different from that of his predecessors, his charter was
different,--reserved, short, dry, conceived in general terms,--a gift,
not a bargain. And, indeed, there seems to have been at that juncture
but little occasion to limit a power which seemed not more than
sufficient to correct all the evils of an unlimited liberty. Henry spent
the beginning of his reign in repairing the ruins of the royal
authority, and in restoring to the kingdom peace and order, along with
its ancient limits; and he may well be considered as the restorer of the
English monarchy. Stephen had sacrificed the demesne of the crown, and
many of its rights, to his subjects; and the necessity of the times
obliged both that prince and the Empress Matilda to purchase, in their
turns, the precarious friendship of the King of Scotland by a cession of
almost all the country north of the Humber. But Henry obliged the King
of Scotland to restore his acquisitions, and to renew his homage. He
took the same methods with his barons. Not sparing the grants of his
mother, he resumed what had been so lavishly squandered by both of the
contending parties, who, to establish their claims, had given away
almost everything that made them valuable. There never was a prince in
Europe who better understood the advantages to be derived from its
peculiar constitution, in which greater acquisitions of dominion are
made by judicious marriages than by success in war: for, having added to
his patrimonial territories of Anjou and Normandy the Duchy of Guienne
by his own marriage, the male issue of the Dukes of Brittany failing, he
took the opportunity of marrying his third son, Geoffrey, then an
infant, to the heiress of that important province, an infant also; and
thus uniting by so strong a link his northern to his southern dominions,
he possessed in his own name, or in those of his wife and son, all that
fine and extensive country that is washed by the Atlantic Ocean, from
Picardy quite to the foot of the Pyrenees.
Henry, possessed of such extensive territories, and aiming at further
acquisitions, saw with indignation that the sovereign authority in all
of them, especially in England, had been greatly diminished. By his
resumptions he had, indeed, lessened the greatness of several of the
nobility. He had by force of arms reduced those who forcibly held the
crown lands, and deprived them of their own estates for their
rebellion. He demolished many castles, those perpetual resources of
rebellion and disorder. But the great aim of his policy was to break the
power of the clergy, which each of his predecessors, since Edward, had
alternately strove to raise and to depress,--at first in order to gain
that potent body to their interests, and then to preserve them in
subjection to the authority which they had conferred. The clergy had
elected Stephen; they had deposed Stephen, and elected Matilda; and in
the instruments which they used on these occasions they affirmed in
themselves a general right of electing the kings of England. Their share
both in the elevation and depression of that prince showed that they
possessed a power inconsistent with the safety and dignity of the state.
The immunities which they enjoyed seemed no less prejudicial to the
civil economy,--and the rather, as, in the confusion of Stephen's reign,
many, to protect themselves from the prevailing violence of the time, or
to sanctify their own disorders, had taken refuge in the clerical
character. The Church was never so full of scandalous persons, who,
being accountable only in the ecclesiastical courts, where no crime is
punished with death, were guilty of every crime. A priest had about this
time committed a murder attended with very aggravating circumstances.
The king, willing at once to restore order and to depress the clergy,
laid hold of this favorable opportunity to convoke the cause to his own
court, when the atrociousness of the crime made all men look with an
evil eye upon the claim of any privilege which might prevent the
severest justice. The nation in general seemed but little inclined to
controvert so useful a regulation with so potent a prince.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1162.]
Amidst this general acquiescence one man was found bold enough to oppose
him, who for eight years together embroiled all his affairs, poisoned
his satisfactions, endangered his dominions, and at length in his death
triumphed over all the power and policy of this wise and potent monarch.
This was Thomas à-Becket, a man memorable for the great glory and the
bitter reproaches he has met with from posterity. This person was the
son of a respectable citizen of London. He was bred to the study of the
civil and canon law, the education, then, used to qualify a man for
public affairs, in which he soon made a distinguished figure. By the
royal favor and his own abilities, he rose, in a rapid succession
through several considerable employments, from an office under the
sheriff of London, to be High Chancellor of the kingdom. In this high
post he showed a spirit as elevated; but it was rather a military spirit
than that of the gownman,--magnificent to excess in his living and
appearance, and distinguishing himself in the tournaments and other
martial sports of that age with much ostentation of courage and expense.
The king, who favored him greatly, and expected a suitable return, on
the vacancy, destined Becket, yet a layman, to the see of Canterbury,
and hoped to find in him a warm promoter of the reformation he intended.
Hardly a priest, he was made the first prelate in the kingdom. But no
sooner was he invested with the clerical character than the whole tenor
of his conduct was seen to change all at once: of his pompous retinue a
few plain servants only remained; a monastic temperance regulated his
table; and his life, in all respects formed to the most rigid austerity,
seemed to prepare him for that superiority he was resolved to assume,
and the conflicts he foresaw he must undergo in this attempt.
It will not be unpleasing to pause a moment at this remarkable period,
in order to view in what consisted that greatness of the clergy, which
enabled them to bear so very considerable a sway in all public
affairs,--what foundations supported the weight of so vast a
power,--whence it had its origin,--what was the nature, and what the
ground, of the immunities they claimed,--that we may the more fully
enter into this important controversy, and may not judge, as some have
inconsiderately done, of the affairs of those times by ideas taken from
the present manners and opinions.
It is sufficiently known, that the first Christians, avoiding the Pagan
tribunals, tried most even of their civil causes before the bishop, who,
though he had no direct coercive power, yet, wielding the sword of
excommunication, had wherewithal to enforce the execution of his
judgments. Thus the bishop had a considerable sway in temporal affairs,
even before he was owned by the temporal power. But the Emperors no
sooner became Christian than, the idea of profaneness being removed from
the secular tribunals, the causes of the Christian laity naturally
passed to that resort where those of the generality had been before. But
the reverence for the bishop still remained, and the remembrance of his
former jurisdiction. It was not thought decent, that he, who had been a
judge in his own court, should become a suitor in the court of another.
The body of the clergy likewise, who were supposed to have no secular
concerns for which they could litigate, and removed by their character
from all suspicion of violence, were left to be tried by their own
ecclesiastical superiors. This was, with a little variation, sometimes
in extending, sometimes in restraining the bishops' jurisdiction, the
condition of things whilst the Roman Empire subsisted. But though their
immunities were great and their possessions ample, yet, living under an
absolute form of government, they were powerful only by influence. No
jurisdictions were annexed to their lands; they had no place in the
senate; they were no order in the state.
From the settlement of the Northern nations the clergy must be
considered in another light. The Barbarians gave them large landed
possessions; and by giving them land, they gave them jurisdiction,
which, according to their notions, was inseparable from it. They made
them an order in the state; and as all the orders had their privileges,
the clergy had theirs, and were no less steady to preserve and ambitious
to extend them. Our ancestors, having united the Church dignities to the
secular dignities of baronies, had so blended the ecclesiastical with
the temporal power in the same persons that it became almost impossible
to separate them. The ecclesiastical was, however, prevalent in this
composition, drew to it the other, supported it, and was supported by
it. But it was not the devotion only, but the necessity of the tunes,
that raised the clergy to the excess of this greatness. The little
learning which then subsisted remained wholly in their hands. Few among
the laity could even read; consequently the clergy alone were proper for
public affairs. They were the statesmen, they were the lawyers; from
them were often taken the bailiffs of the seigneurial courts, sometimes
the sheriffs of counties, and almost constantly the justiciaries of the
kingdom.[78] The Norman kings, always jealous of their order, were
always forced to employ them. In abbeys the law was studied; abbeys were
the palladiums of the public liberty by the custody of the royal
charters and most of the records. Thus, necessary to the great by their
knowledge, venerable to the poor by their hospitality, dreadful to all
by the power of excommunication, the character of the clergy was exalted
above everything in the state; and it could no more be otherwise in
those days than it is possible it should be so in ours.
William the Conqueror made it one principal point of his politics to
reduce the clergy; but all the steps he took in it were not equally well
calculated to answer this intention. When he subjected the Church lands
to military service, the clergy complained bitterly, as it lessened
their revenue: but I imagine it did not lessen their power in
proportion; for by this regulation they came, like other great lords, to
have their military vassals, who owed them homage and fealty: and this
rather increased their consideration amongst so martial a people. The
kings who succeeded him, though they also aimed at reducing the
ecclesiastical power, never pursued their scheme on a great or
legislative principle. They seemed rather desirous of enriching
themselves by the abuses in the Church than earnest to correct them. One
day they plundered and the next day they founded monasteries, as their
rapaciousness or their scruples chanced to predominate; so that every
attempt of that kind, having rather the air of tyranny than reformation,
could never be heartily approved or seconded by the body of the people.
The bishops must always be considered in the double capacity of clerks
and barons. Their courts, therefore, had a double jurisdiction: over the
clergy and laity of their diocese for the cognizance of crimes against
ecclesiastical law, and over the vassals of their barony as lords
paramount. But these two departments, so different in their nature, they
frequently confounded, by making use of the spiritual weapon of
excommunication to enforce the judgments of both; and this sentence,
cutting off the party from the common society of mankind, lay equally
heavy on all ranks: for, as it deprived the lower sort of the fellowship
of their equals and the protection of their lord, so it deprived the
lord of the services of his vassals, whether he or they lay under the
sentence. This was one of the grievances which the king proposed to
redress.
As some sanction of religion is mixed with almost every concern of civil
life, and as the ecclesiastical court took cognizance of all religious
matters, it drew to itself not only all questions relative to tithes and
advowsons, but whatever related to marriages, wills, the estate of
intestates, the breaches of oaths and contracts,--in a word, everything
which did not touch life or feudal property.
The ignorance of the bailiffs in lay courts, who were only possessed of
some feudal maxims and the traditions of an uncertain custom, made this
recourse to the spiritual courts the more necessary, where they could
judge with a little more exactness by the lights of the canon and civil
laws.
This jurisdiction extended itself by connivance, by necessity, by
custom, by abuse, over lay persons and affairs. But the immunity of the
clergy from lay cognizances was claimed, not only as a privilege
essential to the dignity of their order, supported by the canons, and
countenanced by the Roman law, but as a right confirmed by all the
ancient laws of England.
Christianity, coming into England out of the bosom of the Roman Empire,
brought along with it all those ideas of immunity. The first trace we
can find of this exemption from lay jurisdiction in England is in the
laws of Ethelred;[79] it is more fully established in those of
Canute;[80] but in the code of Henry I. it is twice distinctly
affirmed.[81] This immunity from the secular jurisdiction, whilst it
seemed to encourage acts of violence in the clergy towards others,
encouraged also the violence of others against them. The murder of a
clerk could not be punished at this time by death; it was against a
spiritual person, an offence wholly spiritual, of which the secular
courts took no sort of cognizance. In the Saxon times two circumstances
made such an exemption less a cause of jealousy: the sheriff sat with
the bishop, and the spiritual jurisdiction was, if not under the
control, at least under the inspection of the lay officer; and then, as
neither laity nor clergy were capitally punished for any offence, this
privilege did not create so invidious and glaring a distinction between
them. Such was the power of the clergy, and such the immunities, which
the king proposed to diminish.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1164.]
Becket, who had punished the ecclesiastic for his crime by
ecclesiastical law, refused to deliver him over to the secular judges
for farther punishment, on the principle of law, that no man ought to be
twice questioned for the same offence. The king, provoked at this
opposition, summoned a council of the barons and bishops at Clarendon;
and here, amongst others of less moment, the following were unanimously
declared to be the ancient prerogatives of the crown. And it is
something remarkable, and certainly makes much for the honor of their
moderation, that the bishops and abbots who must have composed so large
and weighty a part of the great council seem not only to have made no
opposition to regulations which so remarkably contracted their
jurisdiction, but even seem to have forwarded them.
1st. A clerk accused of any crime shall appear in the king's court, that
it may be judged whether he belongs to ecclesiastical or secular
cognizance. If to the former, a deputy shall go into the bishop's court
to observe the trial; if the clerk be convicted, he shall be delivered
over to the king's justiciary to be punished.
2nd. All causes concerning presentation, all causes concerning
Frankalmoign, all actions concerning breach of faith, shall be tried in
the king's court.
3rd. The king's tenant _in capite_ shall not be excommunicated without
the king's license.
4th. No clerk shall go out of the kingdom without giving security that
he will do nothing to the prejudice of the king or nation. And all
appeals shall be tried at home.
These are the most material of the Constitutions or Assizes of
Clarendon, famous for having been the first legal check given to the
power of the clergy in England. To give these constitutions the greater
weight, it was thought proper that they should be confirmed by a bull
from the Pope. By this step the king seemed to doubt the entireness of
his own authority in his dominions; and by calling in foreign aid when
it served his purpose, he gave it a force and a sort of legal sanction
when it came to be employed against himself. But as no negotiation had
prepared the Pope in favor of laws designed in reality to abridge his
own power, it was no wonder that he rejected them with indignation.
Becket, who had not been prevailed on to accept them but with infinite
reluctance, was no sooner apprised of the Pope's disapprobation than he
openly declared his own; he did penance in the humblest manner for his
former acquiescence, and resolved to make amends for it by opposing the
new constitutions with the utmost zeal. In this disposition the king saw
that the Archbishop might be more easily ruined than humbled, and his
ruin was resolved. Immediately a number of suits, on various pretences,
were commenced against him, in every one of which he was sure to be
foiled; but these making no deadly blow at his fortunes, he was called
to account for thirty thousand pounds which he was accused of having
embezzled during his chancellorship. It was in vain that he pleaded a
full acquittance from the king's son, and Richard de Lucy, the guardian
and justiciary of the kingdom, on his resignation of the seals; he saw
it was already determined against him. Far from yielding under these
repeated blows, he raised still higher the ecclesiastical pretensions,
now become necessary to his own protection. He refused to answer to the
charge, and appealed to the Pope, to whom alone he seemed to acknowledge
any real subjection. A great ferment ensued on this appeal. The
courtiers advised that he should be thrown into prison, and that his
temporalities should be seized. The bishops, willing to reduce Becket
without reducing their own order, proposed to accuse him before the
Pope, and to pursue him to degradation. Some of his friends pressed him
to give up his cause; others urged him to resign his dignity. The king's
servants threw out menaces against his life. Amidst this general
confusion of passions and councils, whilst every one according to his
interests expected the event with much anxiety, Becket, in the disguise
of a monk, escaped out of the nation, and threw himself into the arms of
the King of France.
Henry was greatly alarmed at this secession, which put the Archbishop
out of his power, but left him in full possession of all his
ecclesiastical weapons. An embassy was immediately dispatched to Rome,
in order to accuse Becket; but as Becket pleaded the Pope's own cause
before the Pope himself, he obtained an easy victory over the king's
ambassadors. Henry, on the other hand, took every measure to maintain
his authority: he did everything worthy of an able politician, and of a
king tenacious of his just authority. He likewise took measures not only
to humble Becket, but also to lower that chair whose exaltation had an
ill influence on the throne: for he encouraged the Bishop of London to
revive a claim to the primacy; and thus, by making the rights of the see
at least dubious, he hoped to render future prelates more cautious in
the exercise of them. He inhibited, under the penalty of high treason,
all ecclesiastics from going out of his dominions without license, or
any emissary of the Pope's or Archbishop's from entering them with
letters of excommunication or interdict. And that he might not supply
arms against himself, the Peter-pence were collected with the former
care, but detained in the royal treasury, that matter might be left to
Rome both for hope and fear. In the personal treatment of Becket all the
proceedings were full of anger, and by an unnecessary and unjust
severity greatly discredited both the cause and character of the king;
for he stripped of their goods and banished all the Archbishop's
kindred, all who were in any sort connected with him, without the least
regard to sex, age, or condition. In the mean time, Becket, stung with
these affronts, impatient of his banishment, and burning with all the
fury and the same zeal which had occasioned it, continually threatened
the king with the last exertions of ecclesiastical power; and all things
were thereby, and by the absence and enmity of the head of the English
Church, kept in great confusion.
During this unhappy contention several treaties were set on foot; but
the disposition of all the parties who interested themselves in this
quarrel very much protracted a determination in favor of either side.
With regard to Rome, the then Pope was Alexander the Third, one of the
wisest prelates who had ever governed that see, and the most zealous for
extending its authority. However, though incessantly solicited by Becket
to excommunicate the king and to lay the kingdom under an interdict, he
was unwilling to keep pace with the violence of that enraged bishop.
Becket's view was single; but the Pope had many things to consider: an
Antipope then subsisted, who was strongly supported by the Emperor; and
Henry had actually entered into a negotiation with this Emperor and
this pretended Pope. On the other hand, the king knew that the lower
sort of people in England were generally affected to the Archbishop, and
much under the influence of the clergy. He was therefore fearful to
drive the Pope to extremities by wholly renouncing his authority. These
dispositions in the two principal powers made way for several
conferences leading to peace. But for a long time all their endeavors
seemed rather to inflame than to allay the quarrel. Whilst the king,
steady in asserting his rights, remembered with bitterness the
Archbishop's opposition, and whilst the Archbishop maintained the claims
of the Church with an haughtiness natural to him, and which was only
augmented by his sufferings, the King of France appeared sometimes to
forward, sometimes to perplex the negotiation: and this duplicity seemed
to be dictated by the situation of his affairs. He was desirous of
nourishing a quarrel which put so redoubted a vassal on the defensive;
but he was also justly fearful of driving so powerful a prince to forget
that he was a vassal. All parties, however, wearied at length with a
contest by which all were distracted, and which in its issue promised
nothing favorable to any of them, yielded at length to an accommodation,
founded rather on an oblivion and silence of past disputes than on the
settlement of terms for preserving future tranquillity. Becket returned
in a sort of triumph to his see. Many of the dignified clergy, and not a
few of the barons, lay under excommunication for the share they had in
his persecution; but, neither broken by adversity nor softened by good
fortune, he relented nothing of his severity, but referred them all for
their absolution to the Pope. Their resentments were revived with
additional bitterness; new affronts were offered to the Archbishop,
which brought on new excommunications and interdicts. The contention
thickened on all sides, and things seemed running precipitately to the
former dangerous extremities, when the account of these contests was
brought, with much aggravation against Becket, to the ears of the king,
then in Normandy, who, foreseeing a new series of troubles, broke out in
a violent passion of grief and anger,--"I have no friends, or I had not
so long been insulted by this haughty priest!" Four knights who attended
near his person, thinking that the complaints of a king are orders for
revenge, and hoping a reward equal to the importance and even guilt of
the service, silently departed; and passing with great diligence into
England, in a short time they arrived at Canterbury. They entered the
cathedral; they fell on the Archbishop, just on the point of celebrating
divine service, and with repeated blows of their clubs they beat him to
the ground, they broke his skull in pieces, and covered the altar with
his blood and brains.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1171.]
The horror of this barbarous action, increased by the sacredness of the
person who suffered and of the place where it was committed, diffused
itself on all sides with incredible rapidity. The clergy, in whose cause
he fell, equalled him to the most holy martyrs; compassion for his fate
made all men forget his faults; and the report of frequent miracles at
his tomb sanctified his cause and character, and threw a general odium
on the king. What became of the murderers is uncertain: they were
neither protected by the king nor punished by the laws, for the reason
we have not long since mentioned. The king with infinite difficulty
extricated himself from the consequences of this murder, which
threatened, under the Papal banners, to arm all Europe against him; nor
was he absolved, but by renouncing the most material parts of the
Constitutions of Clarendon, by purging himself upon oath of the murder
of Becket, by doing a very humiliating penance at his tomb to expiate
the rash words which had given occasion to his death, and by engaging to
furnish a large sum of money for the relief of the Holy Land, and taking
the cross himself as soon as his affairs should admit it. The king
probably thought his freedom from the haughtiness of Becket cheaply
purchased by these condescensions: and without question, though Becket
might have been justifiable, perhaps even laudable, for his steady
maintenance of the privileges which his Church and his order had
acquired by the care of his predecessors, and of which he by his place
was the depository, yet the principles upon which he supported these
privileges, subversive of all good government, his extravagant ideas of
Church power, the schemes he meditated, even to his death, to extend it
yet further, his violent and unreserved attachment to the Papacy, and
that inflexible spirit which all his virtues rendered but the more
dangerous, made his death as advantageous, at that time, as the means by
which it was effected were sacrilegious and detestable.
Between the death of Becket and the king's absolution he resolved on the
execution of a design by which he reduced under his dominion a country
not more separated from the rest of Europe by its situation than by the
laws, customs, and way of life of the inhabitants: for the people of
Ireland, with no difference but that of religion, still retained the
native manners of the original Celts. The king had meditated this design
from the very beginning of his reign, and had obtained a bull from the
then Pope, Adrian the fourth, an Englishman, to authorize the attempt.
He well knew, from the internal weakness and advantageous situation of
this noble island, the easiness and importance of such a conquest. But
at this particular time he was strongly urged to his engaging personally
in the enterprise by two other powerful motives. For, first, the murder
of Becket had bred very ill humors in his subjects, the chiefs of whom,
always impatient of a long peace, were glad of any pretence for
rebellion; it was therefore expedient, and serviceable to the crown, to
find an employment abroad for this spirit, which could not exert itself
without being destructive at home. And next, as he had obtained the
grant of Ireland from the Pope, upon condition of subjecting it to
Peter-pence, he knew that the speedy performance of this condition would
greatly facilitate his recovering the good graces of the court of Rome.
Before we give a short narrative of the reduction of Ireland, I propose
to lay open to the reader the state of that kingdom, that we may see
what grounds Henry had to hope for success in this expedition.
Ireland is about half as large as England. In the temperature of the
climate there is little difference, other than that more rain falls; as
the country is more mountainous, and exposed full to the westerly wind,
which, blowing from the Atlantic Ocean, prevails during the greater part
of the year. This moisture, as it has enriched the country with large
and frequent rivers, and spread out a number of fair and magnificent
lakes beyond the proportion of other places, has on the other hand
incumbered the island with an uncommon multitude of bogs and morasses;
so that in general it is less praised for corn than pasturage, in which
no soil is more rich and luxuriant. Whilst it possesses these internal
means of wealth, it opens on all sides a great number of ports, spacious
and secure, and by their advantageous situation inviting to universal
commerce. But on these ports, better known than those of Britain in the
time of the Romans, at this time there were few towns, scarce any
fortifications, and no trade that deserves to be mentioned.
The people of Ireland lay claim to a very extravagant antiquity, through
a vanity common to all nations. The accounts which are given by their
ancient chronicles of their first settlements are generally tales
confuted by their own absurdity. The settlement of the greatest
consequence, the best authenticated, and from which the Irish deduce the
pedigree of the best families, is derived from Spain: it was called Clan
Milea, or the descendants of Milesius, and Kin Scuit, or the race of
Scyths, afterwards known by the name of Scots. The Irish historians
suppose this race descended from a person called Gathel, a Scythian by
birth, an Egyptian by education, the contemporary and friend of the
prophet Moses. But these histories, seeming clear-sighted in the obscure
affairs of so blind an antiquity, instead of passing for treasuries of
ancient facts, are regarded by the judicious as modern fictions. In
cases of this sort rational conjectures are more to be relied on than
improbable relations. It is most probable that Ireland was first peopled
from Britain. The coasts of these countries are in some places in sight
of each other. The language, the manners, and religion of the most
ancient inhabitants of both are nearly the same. The Milesian colony,
whenever it arrived in Ireland, could have made no great change in the
manners or language; as the ancient Spaniards were a branch of the
Celtæ, as well as the old inhabitants of Ireland. The Irish language is
not different from that of all other nations, as Temple and Rapin, from
ignorance of it, have asserted; on the contrary, many of its words bear
a remarkable resemblance not only to those of the Welsh and Armoric, but
also to the Greek and Latin. Neither is the figure of the letters very
different from the vulgar character, though their order is not the same
with that of other nations, nor the names, which are taken from the
Irish proper names of several species of trees: a circumstance which,
notwithstanding their similitude to the Roman letters, argues a
different original and great antiquity. The Druid discipline anciently
flourished in that island. In the fourth century it fell down before the
preaching of St. Patrick. Then the Christian religion was embraced and
cultivated with an uncommon zeal, which displayed itself in the number
and consequence of the persons who in all parts embraced the
contemplative life. This mode of life, and the situation of Ireland,
removed from the horror of those devastations which shook the rest of
Europe, made it a refuge for learning, almost extinguished everywhere
else. Science flourished in Ireland during the seventh and eighth
centuries. The same cause which destroyed it in other countries also
destroyed it there. The Danes, then pagans, made themselves masters of
the island, after a long and wasteful war, in which they destroyed the
sciences along with the monasteries in which they were cultivated. By as
destructive a war they were at length expelled; but neither their
ancient science nor repose returned to the Irish, who, falling into
domestic distractions as soon as they were freed from their foreign
enemies, sunk quickly into a state of ignorance, poverty, and barbarism,
which must have been very great, since it exceeded that of the rest of
Europe. The disorders in the Church were equal to those in the civil
economy, and furnished to the Pope a plausible pretext for giving Henry
a commission to conquer the kingdom, in order to reform it.
The Irish were divided into a number of tribes or clans, each clan
forming within itself a separate government. It was ordered by a chief,
who was not raised to that dignity either by election or by the ordinary
course of descent, but as the eldest and worthiest of the blood of the
deceased lord. This order of succession, called Tanistry, was said to
have been invented in the Danish troubles, lest the tribe, during a
minority, should have been endangered for want of a sufficient leader.
It was probably much more ancient: but it was, however, attended with
very great and pernicious inconveniencies, as it was obviously an affair
of difficulty to determine who should be called the worthiest of the
blood; and a door being always left open for ambition, this order
introduced a greater mischief than it was intended to remedy. Almost
every tribe, besides its contention with the neighboring tribes,
nourished faction and discontent within itself. The chiefs we speak of
were in general called Tierna, or Lords, and those of more consideration
Riagh, or Kings. Over these were placed five kings more eminent than
the rest, answerable to the five provinces into which the island was
anciently divided. These again were subordinate to one head, who was
called Monarch of all Ireland, raised to that power by election, or,
more properly speaking, by violence.
Whilst the dignities of the state were disposed of by a sort of
election, the office of judges, who were called Brehons, the trades of
mechanics, and even those arts which we are apt to consider as depending
principally on natural genius, such as poetry and music, were confined
in succession to certain races: the Irish imagining that greater
advantages were to be derived from an early institution, and the
affection of parents desirous of perpetuating the secrets of their art
in their families, than from the casual efforts of particular fancy and
application. This is much in the strain of the Eastern policy; but these
and many other of the Irish institutions, well enough calculated to
preserve good arts and useful discipline, when these arts came to
degenerate, were equally well calculated to prevent all improvement and
to perpetuate corruption, by infusing an invincible tenaciousness of
ancient customs.
The people of Ireland were much more addicted to pasturage than
agriculture, not more from the quality of their soil than from a remnant
of the Scythian manners. They had but few towns, and those not
fortified, each clan living dispersed over its own territory. The few
walled towns they had lay on the sea-coast; they were built by the
Danes, and held after they had lost their conquests in the inland parts:
here was carried on the little foreign trade which the island then
possessed.
The Irish militia was of two kinds: one called _kerns_, which were
foot, slightly armed with a long knife or dagger, and almost naked; the
other, _galloglasses,_ who were horse, poorly mounted, and generally
armed only with a battle-axe. Neither horse nor foot made much use of
the spear, the sword, or the bow. With indifferent arms, they had still
worse discipline. In these circumstances, their natural bravery, which,
though considerable, was not superior to that of their invaders, stood
them in little stead.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1167.]
Such was the situation of things in Ireland, when Dermot, King of
Leinster, having violently carried away the wife of one of the
neighboring petty sovereigns, Roderic, King of Connaught and Monarch of
Ireland, joined with the injured husband to punish so flagrant an
outrage, and with their united forces spoiled Dermot of his territories,
and obliged him to abandon the kingdom. The fugitive prince, not
unapprised of Henry's designs upon his country, threw himself at his
feet, implored his protection, and promised to hold of him, as his
feudatory, the sovereignty he should recover by his assistance. Henry
was at this time at Guienne. Nothing could be more agreeable to him than
such an incident; but as his French dominions actually lay under an
interdict, on account of his quarrel with Becket, and all his affairs,
both at home and abroad, were in a troubled and dubious situation, it
was not prudent to remove his person, nor venture any considerable body
of his forces on a distant enterprise. Yet not willing to lose so
favorable an opportunity, he warmly recommended the cause of Dermot to
his regency in England, permitting and encouraging all persons to arm in
his favor: a permission, in this age of enterprise, greedily accepted by
many; but the person who brought the most assistance to it, and indeed
gave a form and spirit to the whole design, was Richard, Earl of
Strigul, commonly known by the name of Strongbow. Dermot, to confirm in
his interest this potent and warlike peer, promised him his daughter in
marriage, with the reversion of his crown.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1169.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1171.]
The beginnings of so great an enterprise were formed with a very slender
force. Not four hundred men landed near Wexford: they took the town by
storm. When reinforced, they did not exceed twelve hundred; but, being
joined with three thousand men by Dermot, with an incredible rapidity of
success they reduced Waterford, Dublin, Limerick, the only considerable
cities in Ireland. By the novelty of their arms they had obtained some
striking advantages in their first engagements; and by these advantages
they attained a superiority of opinion over the Irish, which every
success Increased. Before the effect of this first impression had time
to wear off, Henry, having settled his affairs abroad, entered the
harbor of Cork with a fleet of four hundred sail, at once to secure the
conquest, and the allegiance of the conquerors. The fame of so great a
force arriving under a prince dreaded by all Europe very soon disposed
all the petty princes, with their King Roderic, to submit and do homage
to Henry. They had not been able to resist the arms of his vassals, and
they hoped better treatment from submitting to the ambition of a great
king, who left them everything but the honor of their independency, than
from the avarice of adventurers, from which nothing was secure. The
bishops and the body of the clergy greatly contributed to this
submission, from respect to the Pope, and the horror of their late
defeats, which they began to regard as judgments. A national council was
held at Cashel for bringing the Church of Ireland to a perfect
conformity in rites and discipline to that of England. It is not to be
thought that in this council the temporal interests of England were
entirely forgotten. Many of the English were established in their
particular conquests under the tenure of knights' service, now first
introduced into Ireland: a tenure which, if it has not proved the best
calculated to secure the obedience of the vassal to the sovereign, has
never failed in any instance of preserving a vanquished people in
obedience to the conquerors. The English lords built strong castles on
their demesnes; they put themselves at the head of the tribes whose
chiefs they had slain; they assumed the Irish garb and manners; and
thus, partly by force, partly by policy, the first English families took
a firm root in Ireland. It was, indeed, long before they were able
entirely to subdue the island to the laws of England; but the continual
efforts of the Irish for more than four hundred years proved
insufficient to dislodge them.
Whilst Henry was extending his conquests to the western limits of the
known world, the whole fabric of his power was privately sapped and
undermined, and ready to overwhelm him with the ruins, in the very
moment when he seemed to be arrived at the highest and most permanent
point of grandeur and glory. His excessive power, his continual
accessions to it, and an ambition which by words and actions declared
that the whole world was not sufficient for a great man, struck a just
terror into all the potentates near him: he was, indeed, arrived at that
pitch of greatness, that the means of his ruin could only be found in
his own family. A numerous offspring, which is generally considered as
the best defence of the throne, and the support as well as ornament of
declining royalty, proved on this occasion the principal part of the
danger. Henry had in his lawful bed, besides daughters, four sons,
Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John, all growing up with great hopes from
their early courage and love of glory. No father was ever more delighted
with these hopes, nor more tender and indulgent to his children. A
custom had long prevailed in France for the reigning king to crown his
eldest son in his lifetime. By this policy, in turbulent times, and
whilst the principles of succession were unsettled, he secured the crown
to his posterity. Henry gladly imitated a policy enforced no less by
paternal affection than its utility to public peace. He had, during his
troubles with Becket, crowned his son Henry, then no more than sixteen
years old. But the young king, even on the day of his coronation,
discovered an haughtiness which threatened not to content itself with
the share of authority to which the inexperience of his youth and the
nature of a provisional crown confined him. The name of a king
continually reminded him that he only possessed the name. The King of
France, whose daughter he had espoused, fomented a discontent which grew
with his years. Geoffrey, who had married the heiress of Bretagne, on
the death of her father claimed to no purpose the entire sovereignty of
his wife's inheritance, which Henry, under a pretence of guardianship to
a son of full age, still retained in his hands. Richard had not the same
plausible pretences, but he had yet greater ambition. He contended for
the Duchy of Guienne before his mother's death, which, alone could give
him the color of a title to it. The queen, his mother, hurried on by her
own unquiet spirit, or, as some think, stimulated by jealousy,
encouraged their rebellion against her husband. The King of France, who
moved all the other engines, engaged the King of Scotland, the Earl of
Flanders, then a powerful prince, the Earl of Blois, and the Earl of
Boulogne in the conspiracy. The barons in Bretagne, in Guienne, and even
in England, were ready to take up arms in the same cause; whether it was
that they perceived the uniform plan the king had pursued in order to
their reduction, or were solely instigated by the natural fierceness and
levity of their minds, fond of every dangerous novelty. The historians
of that time seldom afford us a tolerable insight into the causes of the
transactions they relate; but whatever were the causes of so
extraordinary a conspiracy, it was not discovered until the moment it
was ready for execution. The first token of it appeared in the young
king's demand to have either England or Normandy given up to him. The
refusal of this demand served as a signal to all parties to put
themselves in motion. The younger Henry fled into France; Louis entered
Normandy with a vast army; the barons of Bretagne under Geoffrey, and
those of Guienne under Richard, rose in arms; the King of Scotland
pierced into England; and the Earl of Leicester, at the head of fourteen
thousand Flemings, landed in Suffolk.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1173]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1174]
It was on this trying occasion that Henry displayed a greatness
independent of all fortune. For, beset by all the neighboring powers,
opposed by his own children, betrayed by his wife, abandoned by one part
of his subjects, uncertain of the rest, every part of his state rotten
and suspicious, his magnanimity grew beneath the danger; and when all
the ordinary resources failed, he found superior resources in his own
courage, wisdom, and activity. There were at that time dispersed over
Europe bodies of mercenary troops, called Brabançons, composed of
fugitives from different nations, men who were detached from any
country, and who, by making war a perpetual trade, and passing from
service to service, had acquired an experience and military knowledge
uncommon in those days. Henry took twenty thousand of these mercenaries
into his service, and, as he paid them punctually, and kept them always
in action, they served him with fidelity. The Papal authority, so often
subservient, so often prejudicial to his designs, he called to his
assistance in a cause which did not misbecome it,--the cause of a father
attacked by his children. This took off the ill impression left by
Becket's death, and kept the bishops firm in their allegiance. Having
taken his measures with judgment, he pursued the war in Normandy with
vigor. In this war his mercenaries had a great and visible advantage
over the feudal armies of France: the latter, not so useful while they
remained in the field, entered it late in the summer, and commonly left
it in forty days. The King of France was forced to raise the siege of
Verneuil, to evacuate Normandy, and agree to a truce. Then, at the head
of his victorious Brabançons, Henry marched into Brittany with an
incredible expedition. The rebellious army, astonished as much by the
celerity of his march as the fury of his attack, was totally routed. The
principal towns and castles were reduced soon after. The custody of the
conquered country being lodged in faithful hands, he flew to the relief
of England. There his natural son Geoffrey, Bishop elect of Ely,
faithful during the rebellion of all his legitimate offspring, steadily
maintained his cause, though with forces much inferior to his zeal. The
king, before he entered into action, thought it expedient to perform his
expiation at the tomb of Becket. Hardly had he finished this ceremony,
when the news arrived that the Scotch army was totally defeated, and
their king made prisoner. This victory was universally attributed to the
prayers of Becket; and whilst it established the credit of the new
saint, it established Henry in the minds of his people: they no longer
looked upon their king as an object of the Divine vengeance, but as a
penitent reconciled to Heaven, and under the special protection of the
martyr he had made. The Flemish army, after several severe checks,
capitulated to evacuate the kingdom. The rebellious barons submitted
soon after. All was quiet in England; but the King of France renewed
hostilities in Normandy, and laid siege to Rouen. Henry recruited his
army with a body of auxiliary Welsh, arrived at Rouen with his usual
expedition, raised the siege, and drove the King of France quite out of
Normandy. It was then that he agreed to an accommodation, and in the
terms of peace, which he dictated in the midst of victory to his sons,
his subjects, and his enemies, there was seen on one hand the tenderness
of a father, and on the other the moderation of a wise man, not
insensible of the mutability of fortune.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1176]
The war which threatened his ruin being so happily ended, the greatness
of the danger served only to enhance his glory; whilst he saw the King
of France humbled, the Flemings defeated, the King of Scotland a
prisoner, and his sons and subjects reduced to the bounds of their duty.
He employed this interval of peace to secure its continuance, and to
prevent a return of the like evils; for which reason he made many
reforms in the laws and polity of his dominions. He instituted itinerant
justices, to weaken the power of the great barons, and even of the
sheriffs, who were hardly more obedient,--an institution which, with
great public advantages, has remained to our times. In the spirit of the
same policy he armed the whole body of the people: the English
commonalty had been in a manner disarmed ever since the Conquest. In
this regulation we may probably trace the origin of the militia, which,
being under the orders of the crown rather in a political than a feudal
respect, were judged more to be relied on than the soldiers of tenure,
to whose pride and power they might prove a sort of counterpoise. Amidst
these changes the affairs of the clergy remained untouched. The king had
experienced how dangerous it was to attempt removing foundations so
deeply laid both in strength and opinion. He therefore wisely aimed at
acquiring the favor of that body, and turning to his own advantage a
power he should in vain attempt to overthrow, but which he might set up
against another power, which it was equally his interest to reduce.
Though these measures were taken with the greatest judgment, and seemed
to promise a peaceful evening to his reign, the seeds of rebellion
remained still at home, and the dispositions that nourished them were
rather increased abroad. The parental authority, respectable at all
times, ought to have the greatest force in times when the manners are
rude and the laws imperfect. At that time Europe had not emerged out of
barbarism, yet this great natural bond of society was extremely weak.
The number of foreign obligations and duties almost dissolved the family
obligations. From the moment a young man was knighted, so far as related
to his father, he became absolute master of his own conduct; but he
contracted at the same time a sort of filial relation with the person
who had knighted him. These various principles of duty distracted one
another. The custom which then prevailed, of bestowing lands and
jurisdictions, under the name of Appanages, to the sons of kings and the
greater nobility, gave them a power which was frequently employed
against the giver; and the military and licentious manners of the age
almost destroyed every trace of every kind of regular authority. In the
East, where the rivalship of brothers is so dangerous, such is the force
of paternal power amongst a rude people, we scarce ever hear of a son in
arms against his father. In Europe, for several ages, it was very
common. It was Henry's great misfortune to suffer in a particular manner
from this disorder.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1180.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1183.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1188.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 1189.]
Philip succeeded Louis, King of France. He followed closely the plan of
his predecessor, to reduce the great vassals, and the King of England,
who was the greatest of them; but he followed it with far more skill and
vigor, though he made use of the same instruments in the work. He
revived the spirit of rebellion in the princes, Henry's sons. These
young princes were never in harmony with each other but in a confederacy
against their father, and the father had no recourse but in the
melancholy safety derived from the disunion of his children. This he
thought it expedient to increase; but such policy, when discovered, has
always a dangerous effect. The sons, having just quarrelled enough to
give room for an explanation of each other's designs, and to display
those of their father, enter into a new conspiracy. In the midst of
these motions the young king dies, and showed at his death such signs of
a sincere repentance as served to revive the old king's tenderness, and
to take away all comfort for his loss. The death of his third son,
Geoffrey, followed close upon the heels of this funeral. He died at
Paris, whither he had gone to concert measures against his father.
Richard and John remained. Richard, fiery, restless, ambitious, openly
took up arms, and pursued the war with implacable rancor, and such
success as drove the king, in the decline of his life, to a dishonorable
treaty; nor was he then content, but excited new troubles. John was his
youngest and favorite child; in him he reposed all his hopes, and
consoled himself for the undutifulness of his other sons; but after
concluding the treaty with the King of France and Richard, he found too
soon that John had been as deep as any in the conspiracy. This was his
last wound: afflicted by his children in their deaths and harassed in
their lives, mortified as a father and a king, worn down with cares and
sorrows more than with years, he died, cursing his fortune, his
children, and the hour of his birth. When he perceived that death
approached him, by his own desire he was carried into a church and laid
at the altar's foot. Hardly had he expired, when he was stripped, then
forsaken by his attendants, and left a long time a naked and unheeded
body in an empty church: affording a just consolation for the obscurity
of a mean fortune, and an instructive lesson how little an outward
greatness and enjoyments foreign to the mind contribute towards a solid
felicity, in the example of one who was the greatest of kings and the
unhappiest of mankind.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] Seld. Tithes, p. 482.
[79] LL. Ethelred. Si presbyter homicida fieret, &c.
[80] LL. Cnuti, 38, De Ministro Altaris Homicida. Idem, 40, De Ordinato
Capitis reo.
[81] LL. H.I. 57, De Querela Vicinorum; and 56 [66?]. De Ordinato qui
Vitam forisfaciat, in Fœd. Alured. et Guthurn., apud Spel. Concil.
376, 1st vol.; LL. Edw. et Guthurn., 3, De Correctione Ordinatorum.